Digital Detox Round-Up

Thanks to everyone who tuned in to Facebook Live event on Digital Detox last week or who watched the video later. I’ll be doing another tomorrow (Friday) at 1pm. Hopefully this time the comments feature will be working so that I can interact with your questions and comments during the live broadcast.

Why Are Our Children So Anxious?6 million American teens grapple with an anxiety disorder of some kind. That;s probably an underestimate because it doesn’t take into account children under 12, whom therapists say are also increasingly facing anxiety that exceeds normal childhood fears and worries. The three main reasons given are “more pressure, more stimulus, and more trickle-down stress.”

They feel pressure to create and manage a digital identity. And they have endless information at their technological fingertips which has the potential to emotionally overwhelm them.

“They’re in a cauldron of stimulus they can’t get away from, or don’t want to get away from, or don’t know how to get away from.”

Even young children can experience a prolonged sense of neurological agitation that comes from screen-time associated with activities such as video games. “The brain becomes overstimulated and doesn’t have a way to calm itself back down,” Goff says. “So kids stay in an anxious frame of mind.”

For this reason, a growing number of parents are beginning to realize that firmer boundaries are necessary when it comes to their child’s need to have a daily segment of time when they separate from their phones or screens entirely—even if this means facing push-back.

7 Reasons I Refuse to Quit FacebookIncreasing numbers of people are leaving Facebook. Before you do so, you may want to consider these reasons to stay. Digital Detox is not about eliminating all digital media but about reducing it to manageable and beneficial proportions.

No one, including myself, advocated a return to the predigital lives we once knew. No one was flinging their phones into lakes, or exclusively living off the grid. An entirely analog existence was unattainable and unattractive, but so was an exclusively digital one. What was ideal, and what lay behind the Revenge of Analog, was striking a balance between the two.

You know what, we can run to a thousand things. You can quickly call somebody on your phone. Just, every one of you just about, you have a phone right in your pocket, right in your purse. You can…

You know, it’s difficult to mourn when all of a sudden you get a text message, and then you respond to it. I mean, right at such a time where you’ve sinned and you’re actually beginning to feel something, and have some deep and real dealings with the Lord, and suddenly you hear a phone beep, and you actually respond to it!

I’ll tell you, one of the reasons we don’t go so deep and we don’t mourn so deeply and we don’t weep so bitterly and we don’t contemplate things like David did is because we’re so caught up in the trivialities of our – you know what, there’s a time to turn off your computer, turn off your phone…

Guys, when I was a teenager, phones had cords that went to the wall. We didn’t even have phones you could walk around the house with. There were no phones in cars, yet. Cell phones weren’t even… that was on Star Trek! I’m saying this because people actually have for a long time lived without these things. There’s a time to shut ‘em off and get alone with the Lord. If you can’t do that, you’re not gonna know the victories of the men and women who have gone really deep with the Lord. That’s just, that’s just a truth.

If you’ve gotta take a 12-gauge shot gun and put a slug hole through the front of your television in order to get alone with the Lord, then do it.